Sentimental Accidents

Headaches and Signs

In my early 20’s I begun to suffer from terribly painful headaches. Not migraines, just painful headaches. This was around 1997 a time when I taking home about $200  week and then finding a way to pay rent, keep my car insured and eat. My primary entertainment was sitting in my studio apartment with a headache and keeping these headaches a secret from people.

By the spring of 1997 I had been suffering from headaches for about a year and had done nothing about it.  When you’re broke you have to decide what is essential and what you can do without. I was almost 23 years old and my essentials included the aforementioned rent, food and car insurance. On top of that there was the cost of gas for the car, a phone for my apartment, beer and increasingly… gin. Fashion was not a priority, which explains why 90’s era photos of me look so bad and finally, health care was not a priority for me even if this meant not treating things like my terrible headaches.

Not seeking medical care was not new for me; after spending hundreds of hours with doctors in the first 8 years of my life I pretty much stopped going after that. Part of this was due to the fact that I was generally physically healthy but mostly I was afraid that going to a doctor might turn us something wrong and that  would cost me a lot of money. I told nobody until finally I found myself unable to do anything for more than a few hours without having to lay down due to the headaches. This was when I finally confided to my then girlfriend that I thought I had a brain tumor and was going to die.

I considered her the sensible one in our relationship so when she told me that I might be getting headaches due to eyestrain I wanted to believe it even though I had never had eye problems in all of my years of taking the eye tests at school or when I took the eye test to get my driver’s license. She asked me to go to an optometrist just in case. I agreed to try it.

A few days later we were on our way to the optometrist and I casually mentioned, like I always did, that the street signs on Long Island were impossible to read because they were so old and faded. She ignored this comment because she had grown tired of hearing it from me. We got to the eye doctor’s office and I went in to take my exam.

I talked about the headaches, I took the eye tests and in a few minutes the doctor advised me that he had good news and bad news: The good news was that I probably didn’t have a brain tumor. The bad news, which suddenly seemed manageable, was that I had a severs astigmatism and would need glasses. He also advised me not to drive until I had glasses.

Out in the lobby I found my girlfriend in the middle of a: “Oh my god what if they find nothing and he IS going to die” style panic. After spending a selfish moment basking in the realization that hey she must really care about me to get this upset I gave her the good news and asked her to drive me home, which she did. I also asked her to drive me to and from work for the next week and she told me that this was not going to happen.

As she drove home she didn’t complain about the road signs once. I drove myself to and from work like I had been doing for a year but I didn’t drive anywhere else that week.

After a week my glasses were ready. To keep up appearances my girlfriend drove me to pick them up. When I tried them on I was amazed. Everything looked different. Because I had never worn glasses before my depth perception would be off until I adjusted to the changes but everything else was suddenly so clear. My eyesight had declined so gradually that I never realized there was anything wrong.

Since I was still adjusting to wearing glasses my girlfriend drove us home too. As she drove I said to her: “Hey while we were in there they must have replaced all of the old street signs.” She didn’t correct me. I would figure it out eventually; the road signs, my priorities and more.

Note: That girl in this story and I eventually split up but not before me and my glasses moved to LA to give it one last try. We are still friends to this day.